The Dubliner Magazine

The Best Book of 2007?

Trevor White on a literary bestseller that may well change your life

Cormac McCarthy has written a stark and gripping yarn about a post-Apocalyptic world. On one level 'The Road' is a simple tale about a father and son in search of food and shelter. It just won the 2007 Pulitzer prize for fiction.

I have never read anything else by McCarthy, so this shrill advertisement should be treated with a degree of scepticism.

However, George Monbiot knows a thing or two about the fate of this planet. This is his description of McCarthy's new book:

"The Road considers what would happen if the world lost its biosphere, and the only living creatures were humans, hunting for food among the dead wood and soot. Some years before the action begins, the protagonist hears the last birds passing over, “their half-muted crankings miles above where they circled the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl.” McCarthy makes no claim that this is likely to occur, but merely speculates about the consequences.

All pre-existing social codes soon collapse and are replaced with organised butchery, then chaotic, blundering horror. What else are the survivors to do?: the only remaining resource is human. It is hard to see how this could happen during humanity’s time on earth, even by means of the nuclear winter McCarthy proposes. But his thought experiment exposes the one terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our dependence on biological production remains absolute. Civilisation is just a russeting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change. Six weeks after finishing The Road, I remain haunted by it."

Monbiot described 'The Road' as "the most important environmental book ever written." That claim sounds slightly flat, as the field of environmental literature is no more crowded than Cleggan in February. However, McCarthy's short, compulsive novel shines in any company: literary thriller, humanist prayer and poetic manifesto, it is the best thing I've read for years. And I'm not really sure if it will ever leave me.

For what it's worth, then: read 'The Road'.

Sticks and Stones

Max McGuinness on some powerful words.

For most of us journoes, it is a chance in a million if anything we ever write turns out to be of the slightest consequence. Of the millions of words of reporting and commentary spewed forth every day, 99.99% of it is forgotten with 24 hours and winds up as nothing more than wrapping for fish and chips.

Perhaps only a handful of the very best, most experienced, and luckiest journalists can point to even one article during their careers which directly altered events in a significant and lasting way.

The likes of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Paul Foot, Upton Sinclair, Seymour Hersh and, in Ireland, Vincent Browne have made in their different ways a deep impression on the political, legal, and social life of their countries by revealing some concealed truth whose publication  provoked major repercussions.

The impact of commentators is harder to measure but Karl Marx, Emile Zola, George Orwell, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Raymond Aron and William F Buckley stand out for having articulated ideas whose impact extended far beyond literature itself.

The rest tends to be only so much verbiage.

And then there is Christopher Hitchens whose writings appear to have directly inspired an intelligent man to go to war and die for his ideals.

Cheney Predicts, then Sabotages, Future

Stand Aside, Nostradamus - This is How the World is Really Going to End

In 1994, Dick Cheney was interviewed on C-Span about US strategy in the first Gulf War. He was asked whether, following the liberation of Kuwait, the United States should have invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. Here are his answers:

There has been a lot of debate about whether the devastation caused by George W. Bush is a product of callousness or plain stupidity. There is no doubt which of these Mr Cheney is guilty of.

What I didn't learn at school.

Dave Dunn wants you to keep in touch. Why does he bother?

So this guy called Dave Dunn rings up to ask if we'll plug his symposium on something called media literacy. Dave is the CEO of the Media Forum and what he really wants is for kids to be taught the skills to communicate. We have an argument with him along these lines: why on earth would anyone wish to see money wasted on teaching the most media-literate generation of human beings ever to communicate? Surely it's older people who need the real teaching? And isn't it all a waste of money and resources? After all, people are still lying on hospital trolleys.

"Look," said Dave, "we're not communicating. Why don't I put it down on paper?"

So he did. Here, then, is what Dave has to say:

24-Hour Party People

Charity Music and Comedy Extravaganza - starting at Midnight.

11 years ago, Tony Ferns set up the Battle of the Axe in the Ha'penny Bridge Inn. It has become an institution. You’d be hard pressed to find a performer in Dublin – comedian, musician, magician or poet – who hasn’t played there and loved it.

Tonight Tony’s running a Marathon 24-hour non-stop music and comedy Extravaganza at The Tivoli Theatre, Francis St, Dublin, in aid of RTE PEOPLE IN NEED TELETHON '07 from Midnight, Thursday, October 25 th - Midnight, Friday, October 26^th 

Adm: Cash @door: Midnight to 4am €10, 4am to 4pm €5, 4pm to 8pm €10, 8pm to mid-night €20

Peig Sayers rides again

Post-Modern Comedy As Gaeilge - How Often Do You See That on Irish Television?

Last night saw the debut of Paddywhackery, a surreal bilingual comedy on TG4. It follows the adventures of ‘Paddy’ – an enterprising Dubliner trying to take advantage of the generous grant schemes available to anyone who sets up a business through Irish.

The show is the brainchild of Paddy Courtney, an enterprising Dublin comedian who successfully pitched the show to TG4. Are you digging the meta-comedy here, people? 

Throughout the series, Paddy (Paddy) is haunted by the ghost of Peig Sayers:

 

If you missed the first episode, it's repeated this Saturday evening at 22.45.

The rest of the series, airs at 9.30 on Wednesday evenings on TG4.

Thousands of Poles go to the Polls in Dublin

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

Residents of one of Dublin's most expensive streets got a shock yesterday as they strolled out to buy their Sunday newspapers. Massive queues of Polish immigrants lined Ailesbury Road all day long. Young, smartly dressed, and good-humoured their numbers stretched round the corner onto the Merrion Road.

The vast majority were out to vote against the ruling conservative Law and Justice party. Reports suggest they were part of an unusually high turnout across Poland which succeeded in ousting the Euro-sceptic Government. On the evidence from the streets of Dublin this afternoon, eighteen years after the fall of the iron curtain, Polish democracy is alive and kicking.

It's a Wonderful Life? Sure. I'm out of here.

John Maguire is unusually happy about Christmas this year

There comes a time in every man's life when the thought of spending yet another festive season en famille – with all the old arguments, grievances, bitter rebukes – becomes too horrific to contemplate. Then there's the thought of Christmas on RTE – the same reheated sitcoms and movies that were great 30 years ago. (Frank Capra: Not that good.)

If, like me, you cannot abide this prospect, might I suggest that you get the heck out of here?

I am going to spend Christmas Day climbing the highest mountain in North Africa. That night I will sleep in a new trekking lodge, built by the people behind Kasbah du Toubkal, a genuinely remarkable retreat in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. There will, I promise, be nary a word about the special Christmas edition of Fair City. No one will have to watch Amanda Brunker on television. And there won't be any priests.

Kasbah du Toubkal – check it out here – is in a mountain village called Imlil, just 40 miles away from Marrakech and all its giddy charms. Conde Nast Traveler described it as Morocco's "first and foremost mountain retreat... with the best rooftop views in North Africa." They weren't exagerrating. It feels like a place untouched by the 18th and 19th centuries. The Berbers who run the place are hospitable in the way we used to describe the Irish as hospitable, and there are precious few distractions. Indeed there is mercifully little to do but read, walk, climb, eat, sleep and marvel at a world that bears no relation to yet another drunken Irish Christmas.

Still, if you're coming, please bring a bottle of whiskey. Climbing is awful thirsty work.

Food for Thought

Written by Pulitzer prizewinner David Mamet, performed in Bewleys during your lunch hour

If you find that a bit of culture at lunchtime helps you through the day, then make sure you see The Shawl currently running in Bewleys Theatre Cafe, Monday to Saturday at 1.10pm. The show charts the power dynamic between a self-professed psychic, his assistant and a client who wishes to contact her dead mother.

This production makes excellent use of the limited time available: David Mamet’s script is predictably sharp, the acting is convincing and the drama builds at an impressive pace.

 Far too many plays deal with, or reference, the supernatural world, before concluding that we dismiss it at our peril. Mercifully, Mamet avoids such new-age nonsense. He systematically exposes and deconstructs the various techniques used by the ‘psychic’ to con the gullible. At the same time he raises the question of whether such deception can have a therapeutic value. 

All in all, an accomplished piece of theatre with a lovely bowl of soup into the bargain. What more could you want for lunch?

 

Ráiméis Arís

Max McGuinness on more Gaeilgeoir nonsense.

I wrote here last week about the stupid idea that immigrants should be receiving Irish language instruction en masse at the same time as they are struggling with the "second national" language - i.e English, the only one which will get you a decent job in this country.

Since then the Gaeilgeoirí have surpassed themselves. A story in last Saturday's Irish Times reports that the European Commission - three years after they were hoodwinked by Bertie in a piece of grandstanding tokenism into making Irish an official EU language - have written to complain that
our Gaeilgeorí are not up to scratch. This confirms what I have always suspected -  the loudest advocates of Gaeilgeorism don't always speak Irish that well themselves and they get away with it because, firstly, most people can't tell, and secondly, there is in fact no agreed standard of what constitutes correct Irish.